Virgin America on April 28 will add new nonstop service between Dallas Love Field and Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, competing directly with Southwest Airlines, the carrier announced Wednesday during its fourth-quarter earnings call.

JetBlue Airways is readying its three-tiered bundled fare structure, which excludes free checked bags at its lowest level, for launch in the second quarter of this year, executives said during the carrier's fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday.

For the 31st time, Business Travel News looks at the executives who most influenced the business travel industry in the previous year to understand the directions in which they have pushed the industry envelope.

Although 63 percent of 434 finance professionals and CFOs responding to a Certify survey released this week used a web-based or ERP expense management system, 27 percent of them still manually review each expense and match it to corporate policy.

Delta Air Lines further solidified its status as the darling of the U.S. corporate travel industry, as the carrier earned the top score in the BTN Annual Airline Survey for the fourth year in a row. Not only did Delta earn the top score from buyers in each of the 10 categories by which airlines are rated in the survey but the carrier also has gained ground against many of its competitors since last year's survey. Delta improved its scores compared with last year in all categories, and its overall average score increased a quarter of a point year over year. Its nearest competitor trailed Delta's overall average score by more than 0.7 points.

Quantifying the value, or, more precisely, the return on investment, of business trips long has been a sort of Holy Grail in corporate travel. Past research efforts, for example, have used econometric data and other factors to propose that every dollar spent on business travel generates a quantifiable dollar amount in revenue, but the findings never gained wide acceptance.